1.
Nebraska
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Nebraska /nᵻˈbræskə/ is a state that lies in both the Great Plains and the Midwestern United States. Its area is just over 77,220 sq mi with almost 1.9 million people and its largest city is Omaha, which is on the Missouri River. The state is crossed by many trails and was explored by the Lewis. Nebraska was admitted as the 37th state of the United States in 1867 and it is the only state in the United States whose legislature is unicameral and officially nonpartisan. Nebraska is composed of two major regions, the Dissected Till Plains and the Great Plains. The Dissected Till Plains is a region of rolling hills. The Great Plains occupy most of western Nebraska, characterized by treeless prairie, the state has a large agriculture sector and is a major producer of beef, pork, corn, and soybeans. Two major climatic zones are represented in Nebraska, the half of the state has a humid continental climate, and the western half. Indigenous peoples lived in the region of present-day Nebraska for thousands of years before European exploration. The historic tribes in the state included the Omaha, Missouria, Ponca, Pawnee, Otoe, when European exploration, trade, and settlement began, both Spain and France sought to control the region. In the 1690s, Spain established trade connections with the Apaches, by 1703, France had developed a regular trade with the native peoples along the Missouri River in Nebraska, and by 1719 had signed treaties with several of these peoples. After war broke out between the two countries, Spain dispatched an expedition to Nebraska under Lieutenant General Pedro de Villasur in 1720. The party was attacked and destroyed near present-day Columbus by a force of Pawnees and Otoes. The massacre of the Villasur expedition effectively put an end to Spanish exploration of Nebraska for the remainder of the 18th century, in 1762, during the Seven Years War, France ceded the Louisiana territory to Spain. Frances withdrawal from the area left Britain and Spain competing for dominance along the Mississippi, by 1773, later that year, Mackays party built a trading post, dubbed Fort Carlos IV, near present-day Homer. In 1819, the United States established Fort Atkinson as the first U. S. Army post west of the Missouri River, the army abandoned the fort in 1827 as migration moved further west. European-American settlement did not begin in any numbers until after 1848, on May 30,1854, the US Congress created the Kansas and the Nebraska territories, divided by the Parallel 40° North, under the Kansas–Nebraska Act. The Nebraska Territory included parts of the current states of Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, the territorial capital of Nebraska was Omaha
2.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
3.
Chadron, Nebraska
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Chadron is a city in Dawes County, in the state of Nebraska in the Great Plains region of the United States. The population was 5,851 at the 2010 census and it is the county seat of Dawes County, and the location of Chadron State College. Chadron also is the United States Forest Service headquarters of the Nebraska and Samuel R. McKelvie National Forests, and the Buffalo Gap, Fort Pierre, the Museum of the Fur Trade is located near Chadron, at the site of the American Fur Companys former Bordeaux Trading Post. Succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples lived in the area for thousands of years, in historic times, tribes such as the Oglala Lakota, Cheyenne and others lived in the area. The Sioux used this territory as a hunting ground after pushing other tribes to the west, Chadron is named for Louis Chartran, a French-Indian fur trapper who ran a trading post on Bordeaux Creek in 1841. He was married to an American Indian woman, in 1884 the town was formally established when the Fremont, Elkhorn, and Missouri Valley Railroad was constructed through the area from Omaha, Nebraska, en route to Wyoming. Chadron was first named OLinn for its founder Fannie OLinn, who built a community at the confluence of the White River and this is where the railroad was expected to branch. When it was six miles away on Bordeaux Creek, the townspeople packed up the entire town—buildings included—and moved it to the new location. Among the founders of the town were the businessman Charles Henry King, King established retail and freight businesses and banks in towns along the railroads route, he capitalized on the flow of settlers and pioneers to the region. Four of the five King children were born in Chadron, including their second son Leslie Lynch King, in 1908 the family moved to Omaha, the business center of the state. In 1912 Leslie married, and in July 1913 became the father of the future president, King and his wife divorced soon after that. During the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair, Chadron was the point of the 1. Nine riders competed for the $1,000 prize to be the first to reach the entrance of Buffalo Bills Wild West Show, among the riders was the former outlaw Doc Middleton. John Berry won the race in 13 days and 16 hours, Chadron State College was founded in 1911. In the Lakota language, Chadron is known as čhápa wakpá otȟúŋwahe, Chadron is located at 3,400 feet in elevation. It is surrounded by grassland, broken by a ridge of lightly forested hills to the south. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 3.85 square miles. As of the census of 2010, there were 5,851 people,2,306 households, the population density was 1,519.7 inhabitants per square mile
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
United States Forest Service
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The United States Forest Service is an agency of the U. S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nations 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands, which encompass 193 million acres. Major divisions of the include the National Forest System, State and Private Forestry, Business Operations. Managing approximately 25% of federal lands, it is the major national land agency that is outside the U. S. Department of the Interior. The concept of the National Forests was born from Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation group, Boone and Crockett Club, in 1876, Congress created the office of Special Agent in the Department of Agriculture to assess the quality and conditions of forests in the United States. Hough was appointed the head of the office, in 1881, the office was expanded into the newly formed Division of Forestry. The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 authorized withdrawing land from the domain as forest reserves. In 1901, the Division of Forestry was renamed the Bureau of Forestry, gifford Pinchot was the first United States Chief Forester in the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. As of 2009, the Forest Service has a budget authority of $5.5 billion. The Forest Service employs 34,250 employees in 750 locations, including 10,050 firefighters,737 law enforcement personnel, and 500 scientists. The mission of the Forest Service is To sustain the health, diversity and its motto is Caring for the land and serving people. As the lead agency in natural resource conservation, the US Forest Service provides leadership in the protection, management, and use of the nations forest, rangeland. The agencys ecosystem approach to management integrates ecological, economic, and social factors to maintain and enhance the quality of the environment to meet current, the everyday work of the Forest Service balances resource extraction, resource protection, and providing recreation.5 billion trees per year. Further, the Forest Service fought fires on 2,996,000 acres of land in 2007, the Forest Service organization includes ranger districts, national forests, regions, research stations and research work units and the Northeastern Area Office for State and Private Forestry. Each level has responsibility for a variety of functions, the Chief of the Forest Service is a career federal employee who oversees the entire agency. The Chief reports to the Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment in the U. S. Department of Agriculture, there are five deputy chiefs for the following areas, National Forest System, State and Private Forestry, Research and Development, Business Operations, and Finance. The Forest Service Research and Development deputy area includes five stations, the Forest Products Laboratory. Station directors, like regional foresters, report to the Chief, Research stations include Northern, Pacific Northwest, Pacific Southwest, Rocky Mountain, and Southern. There are 92 research work units located at 67 sites throughout the United States, there are 80 Experimental Forests and Ranges that have been established progressively since 1908, many sites are more than 50 years old
6.
United States National Forest
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National Forest is a classification of protected and managed federal lands in the United States. The National Forest System was created by the Land Revision Act of 1891, abbot Kinney and forester Theodore Lukens were key spokesmen for the effort. In the United States there are 155 National Forests containing almost 190 million acres of land and these lands comprise 8.5 percent of the total land area of the United States, an area about the size of Texas. Some 87 percent of National Forest land lies west of the Mississippi River in the ranges of the Western United States. Alaska has 12 percent of all National Forest lands, the U. S. Forest Service also manages all of the United States National Grasslands, and around half of the United States National Recreation Areas. There are two different types of forests within the National Forest system. Those east of the Great Plains in the Midwestern and Eastern United States were primarily acquired by the government since 1891. The land had long been in the domain and sometimes repeatedly logged since colonial times. These are mostly lands that were kept in the domain, with the exception of inholdings. Land management of these areas focuses on conservation, timber harvesting, livestock grazing, watershed protection, wildlife, unlike national parks and other federal lands managed by the National Park Service, extraction of natural resources from national forests is permitted, and in many cases encouraged. National Forests are categorized by the U. S. as IUCN Category VI protected areas, however, the first-designated wilderness areas, and some of the largest, are on National Forest lands. There are management decision conflicts between conservationists and environmentalists, and natural resource extraction companies and lobbies, over the protection and/or use of National Forest lands, many ski resorts and summer resorts operate on leased land in National Forests
7.
U.S. state
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A U. S. state is a constituent political entity of the United States of America. There are 50 states, which are together in a union with each other. Each state holds administrative jurisdiction over a geographic territory. Due to the shared sovereignty between each state and the government, Americans are citizens of both the federal republic and of the state in which they reside. State citizenship and residency are flexible, and no government approval is required to move between states, except for persons covered by certain types of court orders. States range in population from just under 600,000 to over 39 million, four states use the term commonwealth rather than state in their full official names. States are divided into counties or county-equivalents, which may be assigned some local authority but are not sovereign. County or county-equivalent structure varies widely by state, State governments are allocated power by the people through their individual constitutions. All are grounded in principles, and each provides for a government. States possess a number of powers and rights under the United States Constitution, Constitution has been amended, and the interpretation and application of its provisions have changed. The general tendency has been toward centralization and incorporation, with the government playing a much larger role than it once did. There is a debate over states rights, which concerns the extent and nature of the states powers and sovereignty in relation to the federal government. States and their residents are represented in the federal Congress, a legislature consisting of the Senate. Each state is represented in the Senate by two senators, and is guaranteed at least one Representative in the House, members of the House are elected from single-member districts. Representatives are distributed among the states in proportion to the most recent constitutionally mandated decennial census, the Constitution grants to Congress the authority to admit new states into the Union. Since the establishment of the United States in 1776, the number of states has expanded from the original 13 to 50, alaska and Hawaii are the most recent states admitted, both in 1959. The Constitution is silent on the question of states have the power to secede from the Union. Shortly after the Civil War, the U. S. Supreme Court, in Texas v. White, as a result, while the governments of the various states share many similar features, they often vary greatly with regard to form and substance
8.
Sandhills (Nebraska)
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The Sandhills, often written Sand Hills, is a region of mixed-grass prairie on grass-stabilized sand dunes in north-central Nebraska, covering just over one quarter of the state. The dunes were designated a National Natural Landmark in 1984. The sandhills are found in Arthur, Blaine, Brown, Cherry, Custer, Garden, Garfield, Grant, Holt, Hooker, Lincoln, Keith, Logan, Loup, McPherson, Morrill, Rock, Sheridan, Thomas, and Wheeler counties. The boundaries of the Sandhills are variously defined by different organizations, depending on the definition, the regions area can be as small as 19,600 mi2 or as large as 23,600 mi2. Dunes in the Sandhills may exceed 330 ft in height, the average elevation of the region gradually increases from about 1,800 ft in the east to about 3,600 ft in the west. The Sandhills sit atop the massive Ogallala Aquifer, thus both temporary and permanent shallow lakes are common in low-lying valleys between the grass-stabilized dunes prevalent in the Sandhills. The eastern and central sections of the region are drained by tributaries of the Loup River, the World Wide Fund for Nature designated the Sandhills as an ecoregion, distinct from other grasslands of the Great Plains. According to their assessment, as much as 85% of the ecoregion is intact natural habitat and this is chiefly due to the lack of crop production, most of the Sandhills land has never been plowed. Much of the area was a desert, with desert-like conditions extending to several other states. The plant-anchored dunes of the Sandhills were long considered an irreclaimable desert, in the 1870s, cattlemen began to discover their potential as rangeland for Longhorn cattle. The fragility of the soil makes the area unsuitable for cultivation of crops. Unsuccessful attempts at farming were made in the region in the late 1870s, some development of cropland agriculture in the modern era has occurred through the use of center-pivot irrigation systems. The 1904 Kinkaid Act allowed homesteaders to claim 640 acres of land, nearly nine million acres were successfully claimed by Kinkaiders between 1910 and 1917. Some of the Kinkaiders attempted to farm, but these attempts generally failed and this included Nebraskas largest black settlement, DeWitty, which was located in southeast Cherry County until the 1930s. Many of the largest ranches broke up about the time due to regulations against fencing federal range lands. In the 21st century, the Sandhills are a cattle ranching area. The population of the region continues to decline as older generations die out, however, a number of small towns remain in the region. As the largest and most intricate wetland ecosystem in the United States, minimal crop production has led to limited land fragmentation, the resulting extensive and continuous habitat for plant and animal species has largely preserved the biodiversity of the area
9.
Thomas County, Nebraska
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Thomas County is a county in the U. S. state of Nebraska. As of the 2010 census, the population was 647, the county was formed in 1887 and named after General George H. Thomas. In the Nebraska license plate system, Thomas County is represented by the prefix 89, according to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 714 square miles, of which 713 square miles is land and 0.8 square miles is water. The population density was 1 person per square mile, there were 446 housing units at an average density of 1 per square mile. The racial makeup of the county was 99. 45% White,0. 27% Native American,0. 82% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 31. 40% of all households were made up of individuals and 16. 60% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older, the average household size was 2.24 and the average family size was 2.84. In the county, the population was out with 23. 60% under the age of 18,4. 40% from 18 to 24,23. 90% from 25 to 44,27. 80% from 45 to 64. The median age was 44 years, for every 100 females there were 99.70 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.80 males, the median income for a household in the county was $27,292, and the median income for a family was $36,618. Males had an income of $25,662 versus $20,577 for females. The per capita income for the county was $15,335, about 13. 60% of families and 14. 30% of the population were below the poverty line, including 21. 30% of those under age 18 and 17. 30% of those age 65 or over. Halsey Natick Thedford Norway Seneca National Register of Historic Places listings in Thomas County, Nebraska
10.
Blaine County, Nebraska
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Blaine County is a county in the U. S. state of Nebraska. As of the 2010 census, the population was 478, making it Nebraskas second-least populous county, the county was formed in 1885 and organized in 1886. It is named after presidential candidate James G. Blaine, in the Nebraska license plate system, Blaine County is represented by the prefix 86. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 715 square miles, the population density was 1 person per square mile. There were 333 housing units at a density of 0 per square mile. The racial makeup of the county was 98. 97% White,0. 51% Native American,45. 1% were of German,12. 2% English,10. 2% Irish and 8. 4% American ancestry according to Census 2000. 26. 90% of all households were made up of individuals and 13. 90% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older, the average household size was 2.45 and the average family size was 2.98. In the county, the population was out with 26. 20% under the age of 18,3. 90% from 18 to 24,26. 60% from 25 to 44,26. 40% from 45 to 64. The median age was 40 years, for every 100 females there were 101.70 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 100.90 males, the median income for a household in the county was $25,278, and the median income for a family was $28,472. Males had an income of $17,917 versus $20,000 for females. The per capita income for the county was $12,323, about 18. 70% of families and 19. 40% of the population were below the poverty line, including 21. 70% of those under age 18 and 9. 40% of those age 65 or over. More than 25% of the residents of Blaine County belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, no other county in the state — or anywhere else so far east in the country — has more than 25% membership. This however may actually reflect an oddity in the used to come to these numbers more than it does reality. This method does not work when a ward or branch covers multiple counties
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